A widower with two adorable boys and a Bohemian beauty who owns the local café are brought together in this emotional, heartwarming novel in Donna Alward's Darling, VT series.
Widower Ethan Gallagher's biggest challenge is just making it day to day. A single father to two adorable boys and a firefighter, he juggles work and parenthood with the help of his family. But life without his wife is even harder to navigate. When he's injured on a call and put off work until he's healed, he finds himself at loose ends. And that leads him to volunteering at the temporary food bank site and puts him face to face with Willow Dunaway, owner of the Purple Pig Café and the woman in charge of the project.
Willow works hard at serenity. After a particularly rough childhood followed by years away from Darling, she's come home and started a business she's passionate about. She's worked hard at finding inner peace and serenity, but Ethan challenges that at every turn, making her realize there are still things she hasn't dealt with. The passion between them is incendiary, and she also finds herself falling for his little boys, which resurrects all sorts of memories she thought she'd put behind her.
But when Willow's deepest secret is finally revealed, their fragile happiness is threatened. You can't have love without trust, and how can you trust when falling in love is the most frightening thing of all?